Posted
by
samzenpus
on Wednesday September 21, 2011 @01:35PM
from the internet-for-the-people dept.

wasimkadak writes "Comcast rolled out its Internet Essentials program nationwide today, offering low-income families in its service territory $10/month Internet connections and access to $150 computers. Any family with at least one child who qualifies for the free lunch program at public schools can subscribe to a low-speed (1.5Mbps) Comcast Internet connection for $9.95 a month. Comcast guarantees that it won't raise the price and offers the plan without equipment rental or activation fees. Subscribers also cannot have 'an overdue Comcast bill or unreturned equipment,' and they can't have had Comcast Internet in the last 90 days."

You'd need some voltage-conversion circuitry, and the ringer equivalence number would be stratospheric; but you might be able to get away with powering the modem, or even the entire computer, directly from the POTS line. For a few seconds. Until you tripped a protective mechanism or Ma Bell's telco ninjas came for you...

You had to know some would complain about not getting the same handout. The reason people give these benefits to kids is because many of the low-income adults are too old to learn new tricks, you hate to see the children suffer, and frankly there is some hope the kids may turn out better than their parents at being able to hold a job.

I do not think that all people who are low income are lazy do nothings, but I can't separate those who have just down on their luck, and those who like to take the government d

That's true today, but the entire public library system is under assault and I would not be surprised to see it dismantled within a decade. Slashdotters routinely make remarks like "who needs libraries when we have Google Books!" Libraries are trying hard to remain relevant. Free, public internet access is one of their real services to the community... but now on Slashdot, and at town budget meetings, people can stand up and shout "who needs libraries when Comcast offers free^H^H^H^H cheap(er) internet access to (some) poor people (in select markets)!"

Several years ago a local town library build a brand new computer center as an expansion to their public library system - two computer rooms and a large meeting room. It's its own building down the street from the original library. Even the official title of the project was the "Bookless Library."

I'm fairly sure that's not a wholly unique story.

Now if you want to complain about libraries struggling to stay relevant, let's talk about the "teen centers" with the big screen TVs and game consoles....=Smidge=

Slashdotters routinely make remarks like "who needs libraries when we have Google Books!" Libraries are trying hard to remain relevant. Free, public internet access is one of their real services to the community... but now on Slashdot, and at town budget meetings, people can stand up and shout "who needs libraries when Comcast offers free^H^H^H^H cheap(er) internet access to (some) poor people (in select markets)!"

I've been on/. for a while and I have never posted that we don't need libraries.

Slashdotters routinely make remarks like "who needs libraries when we have Google Books!"

I haven't ever seen such a thing on Slashdot. Many people say that we don't need paper books long-term, but this doesn't translate to "don't need libraries". Quite the opposite, in fact - libraries would be so much easier to run, and we could have more of them, if all books were electronic.

I feel (irrationally?) that losing libraries would be a net loss. I want them, but can't figure out why.

However, they seem less and less relevant today. I talk to coworkers or friends (and I'm sure we all know people) who don't read. Heck, I don't read often for recreation anymore either, especially now that we have computer games or Netflix. When I do read, it's usually something that's either on the internet (Project Gutenberg, or the Baen free library).

The last paragraph of the linked article mentions that they had no choice but to do this:

Though Comcast no doubt loves children and cares deeply about the digital divide, its Internet Essentials program was also a part of the conditions under which it was allowed to buy NBC earlier this year. The company pledged to reach 2.5 million low income households with high speed Internet for less than $10 a month, and to sell some sort of computer for $150 or less.

To be fair, from what I hear it was a condition that Comcast themselves offered. Of course, one could then go ahead and say that they had no choice but to offer such a program in order to gain approval for the deal in the first place, so I guess in the end it's a moot point.

It may improve their bottom line, but probably not all that much. A $10 connection is at most $25 million, a rounding error for a company that has $45 billion in revenue.

And that doesn't include the cost of providing that service: bandwidth, cable maintenance, user support phone calls, etc. If the $10 includes a cable modem, then their profit margin is going to be razor thin. (It's kinda skeezy if $10 turns into $15 or $20 through fees, taxes, and "optional" services.)

The last paragraph of the linked article mentions that they had no choice but to do this:

Do you think a poor family that is getting $10/month broadband (1.5/384) cares that it was part of a merger deal? The upshot is that millions of lower income families are going to get internet -- that's a Good Thing(TM).

Is it really necessary to attribute human emotions to corporations? Some people who work at Comcast probably care very deeply and others couldn't care less. The point is, they're doing it. The end result is what I think we'd all identify as a 'good thing'.

Except that if it were up to you, nothing would get "government-started," since you'd decry the initial involvement of the government as a commie plot, so we're back to you getting off of the Internet.

Government is good at infrastructure services. They are bad at innovation, and content.

Corporations are bad at infrastructure but good at innovation and content.

A Government Internet Connection will probably reach most Americans and have great up time, and really wouldn't cost us too much more and probably a lot less. However they may not innovate and in 5 - 10 years we will be stuck with a very slow useless connection. Or they will try to force (more) the content we can and cannot get. FCC for the Inter

"Government is good at infrastructure services. They are bad at innovation, and content.

Corporations are bad at infrastructure but good at innovation and content.

Absolutely true.

I would add - The government is a great driver of innovation.

Government Internet would not be like TV, and there wouldn't be an FCC. Different eras,. different intent.If it's like many other infrastructural project, we would get tremendous bandwidth, and low price. It would all be engineered to work together and be upgrade able. How

what is wrong with each county/city/local whatever having the rights to the lines/cables/ducts and leasing out the bandwidth to companies like comcast/att/verizon to sell service? then we could pick and choose what we want based on package plans and deals? Isn't that the whole crux of having everything neutral? I think that local government with responsible oversight > federal government. Why did local municipalities not use those lines that they could lease out to help pay for local infrastructure inste

Some variations that may be better in some locations:Municipally owed cables or conduits that independent organizations can lease access to provide internet service.Mutual (cooperative) ownership of the cable and or internet service provider by customers and possibly employees.

By infrastructure, I hope that you mean pipes that let ISPs run cable through at dramatically lower costs than digging up roads and burying cables one by one. It would also mean that once the first right of was was pushed through, new companies could enter the market without the roadblock of right of ways.

A particular upshot of this is that pipes are something that most municipalities have a huge amount of experience with.

With Comcast, I pay for the internet and cable I use. With a government run cable/internet, I pay for what I use, and what my neighbor uses, and what the guy down the street uses. If I decide not to use it, I still have to pay for it. No thanks.

You're like the people that bought lower grade, poorly made tea leave from the black market for more money then higher quality teas from EITC, because there was a minor tax on the EITC tea to support safe shipping.

His argument is the political uncertainty and the certainty that government services would have to be cut in the future or taxes raised or both in the future cost at least as many jobs and the stimulus might have created, and likely cost better jobs.

I don't like Perry for lots of reasons, I REALLY REALLY hope he does not get the GOP nomination, but he is right about stimulus. Its not a good economic policy to try and smooth over anything but the shallowest dips. It just kicks the can down the road, at gre

I recently moved from an area serviced by Time Warner to an area serviced by Comcast. The set of services I bought from each (lowest cable package with HD/DVR and consumer grade of cable internet) came in right around $100 with Time Warner, and when I cancelled my service from Comcast last year they had jacked the rates up to almost $150 (both figures are after taxes and fees).

I know there is a geographic component to this, but Comcast sets the pricing

when I cancelled my service from Comcast last year they had jacked the rates up to almost $150

You can get it for $100/mo from Comcast but you have to call and play their game every year when your "promotional package" expires. It's actually their business model to make you threaten to cancel every year to keep your rates from going up.

Yeah me too. Its the warm fuzzy feeling of someone paying $70 a month for the same crappy 1.5Mbps (but advertised as much higher), and knowing that I'm also paying for my lazy ass welfare neighbors net.

Low rent class-warriors are one of the world's more pathetic sights:

Comcast is charging you $70/month for a shit connection and getting away with an almost-certain-to-make-the-already-pitiful-state-of-'competition'-even-worse merger deal by throwing your neighbors a crumb. Are you angry at Comcast because Comcast is farming your sorry ass under the pretense that they operate in a competitive market? Or at the regulators and blowhards of the nation who allow this charade to continue? Of course not...

A revenue maximizing price-discrimination tactic and a PR coup that should keep those meddlesome regulators from breathing down their duopolist-at-best necks... Plus, the odds are good that at least some of your customers will feel more shafted by the fact that nasty, undeserving, poor people are getting low prices than by the fact that those prices only look low because all the other prices are so high.

This program appears to do just that(in addition to fulfilling their NBC merger requirements at what is likely a fairly low cost). Depending on the area, you can't get that particular internet tier, if they offer it unbundled at all, for less than $20/month and sometimes rather more.

In addition to generally high prices and tepid speeds, there is really a pretty gigantic hole toward the bottom of the ISP market: even in densely settled areas with mature infrastructure buildouts, it can be pretty tricky to

it can be pretty tricky to find anything that doesn't have at least a $15 base price

How low do you think it can really go in meatspace? That $15/mo probably represents electricity, billing, one or two phone calls a year, and replacing some infrastructure every several years. Plus maybe a few bucks a year into a 'shared pool' to deal with a lightning strike that requires a full local rebuild.

It's already about the same cost as a pizza, or a movie and popcorn. Maybe lunch for two at McDonald's if you sprin

what i love is not having Comcast net service for 90 days.. so if they have net access due to need but can barely afford it - they can't drop down to the lower rate which suits their cash flow.. unless they go without for 3 months showing that it isn't needed and rather a luxury to them.. basically screwing over people who need it.

and as people say no one "needs" a net connection - but hey no one needs anything really

Before any of you jump all over me, I want you to think about this for a moment (and I'm being sincere). Most likely, this program is aimed at latino and black communities. Historically they rank the highest group of unemployed and last to actually depend on Internet based technologies and services. If anything, this low priced service offering has the potential to bridge the "digital divide". But that's more of a cultural preference than one strictly of cost within that demographic, so I'm not entirely con

My suspicion is that, if Comcast thought the 90-day rule wouldn't be relevant, they wouldn't have imposed it...

Given that this is an (approximately) value-rational, profit-seeking entity attempting to fulfill an obligation attached to a merger deal at the lowest cost, it seems only reasonable to suspect that every term and condition of the offer is either obligatory(as in the case of the price) or designed to reduce the number of takers(90-day requirement, no outstanding comcast bills requirement, househ

The 90-day requirement seems aimed at a demographic that doesn't already have internet access. If you're poor and already have internet access, Comcast will assume you'll still pay the current rate and/or you've already budgeted your finances around it. No point it reducing profit margins in their eyes. The rest of the requirements definitely fits the profile of low-income too. Specifically in the area of reducing risk as they disproportionately laps in on-time bill payment. Sometimes going over 60 days and

This is an unreasonable expectation given that the US monetary system has inflation. Eventually they would really have to raise prices or end up losing too much money.

The inflation rate is an average. As technology improves, many things decrease in cost faster than the currency declines toward worthlessness. The cost of backhaul for a 1.5Mb service is one of those things. Cable maintence: probably not. So in the forseable future where 1.5Mb/s cable internet is actually useful and desireable, I see no reason why Comcast can not keep their promise. If the Dollar is allowed to sink to it's proper level against the Yuan and we get into hyper inflation then, of course,

The merger consent deal only required them to do this for three years(not 3 years per subscribing household, 3 years, clock starts ticking toward the point where they needn't offer it anymore). It also excludes anyone who has had comcast service in the last 90 days, or owes comcast any money or hardware from past service, or doesn't meet the income criteria...

Even if they are losing money on these accounts(which is by no means a given), the time and population restrictions on the offer should put a prett

Not if the pace of technological progress outpaces inflation. IOW, in a country where productivity keeps rising such a deal will most likely make them money in the long term until the cost of supporting an outdated technology outweighs the income from those contracts. At which point they can simply upgrade you.

E.g. when DSL was taking off in Germany, most DSL providers would offer you an upgrade which doubled the speed of your internet connection without raising the price. They got a renewed contract out of

While I'll never qualify for this, I still find myself having to criticize Comcast for doing everything possible to avoid helping as many people as they can. The very last line of the stipulation is what ruins it for me, when they state: "and they can't have had Comcast Internet in the last 90 days." If people qualify for it because they NEED it, stop doing everything possible to keep people from being able to qualify for it. Having had Comcast in the last 90 days doesn't somehow make someone who is on the list of those in poverty from being any less poor. Just give them the damn benefit like everyone else who falls into the "need" demographic. Yeah, I know no one really "needs" it, but if they're going through and pretending to be helpful, at least be helpful.

Try applying for a job without the internet. Cant be done as all HR people are lazy as hell.Very soon you will need internet access as much as needing a telephone. Most executives orgasm at the though of firing all CSR's and require all payments and support to go through the internet.

Not all libraries have internet, and if they do, it's often broken, slow, or there's not enough computers for everyone. Computers at libraries are often full of viruses, both the digital type and the organic type. I am not saying that libraries are useless in this regard, but they leave a lot to be desired.

If someone currently has Comcast internet access, they are somehow paying big bucks for the service so they obviously think they can afford it.

If the goal is to get service to those who otherwise couldn't afford it, this restriction seems reasonable. There are obviously corner cases (loss of job, death of primary wage earner etc) where someone's situation changes suddenly.

The restriction also is fairly easy to work around for many people by dropping Comcast for 91 days and either doing without or rely

So this is a new thing, it's optional, and it will probably bring the Internet to a reasonable number of disadvantaged children who currently don't have it.

That seems like a good thing.

Now I understand they are doing this as part of a previous deal, and that they could have done more, and that they still have horrible service or whatever. But this is still quite good news. I think this will really help some people - possibly really change some lives for the better - and it will help more people if the news gets around well.

We almost had something, with the various community wifi programs, in varying amounts of formality and size, happening around the country. People who couldn't afford the $40+ per month for broadband and didn't need all that speed were sharing access points, and it was mostly good (except which RIAA/MPAA came knocking). Now, in comcast land, the impetus will be crushed for those parents with no money, to get out and do something technical for their community. Oh well, I should look on the bright side, that means that they can share the connection they have without needing to press for cash (much). Too bad you have to have children to use it. It seems to me that such discount plans should be available regardless of whether one has a child. Single people need to hunt for jobs, apply for foodstamps, improve their computer skills, and find ways to fill the empty hopeless hours, just as much as parents do.

Without children, it will be challenging to have intellectual innovations, a viable work force, a military, or potential explorers in fifty, sixty, or a hundred years.

Yes, some people have too many. Others have kids at a time when they can support them, and then lose the ability to support them. It's hard to fault someone for having kids they could support when the new inability to support them is something they have little control over.

Agreed - AT&T offers products only to "low income" homes - one i would like.. Life line - its a 10$ a month phone line that can only call 911.. i don't use my home phone - but i have it because i have a kid.. and if i need 911 a land line is the surest thing to always work. Because i'm not "low income" mine is 40$ a month after taxes.. (and no i don't have long distance - and no i don't use it)